Student housing operator and investor Unite has seen rental growth of 8.2% in the three months ended 30 September, pushing the valuation of its portfolio higher.
The group said it expected to see further rental growth of 4-5% in the 2025/26 academic year.
Chief executive Joe Lister said: “We have delivered a strong lettings performance for the 2024/25 academic year, underpinned by our alignment to the UK’s strongest universities and high-quality nomination agreements. The outlook for the business is positive with strong student demand at a time of limited new supply and ongoing investment into our portfolio and platform.”
He added: “We have made good progress with the delivery of our record development pipeline and deploying the proceeds of our recent capital raise. These projects will deliver much-needed new student homes in some of the UK’s strongest university cities and help to ease wider housing shortages.”
Occupancy across the Unite portfolio stands at 97.5% for the 2024/25 academic year, which the group said was in line with its long-term trend.
Looking ahead, the group said there was a positive outlook for the 2025/26 academic year with demographic growth supporting strong demand from UK students.
Unite said supply of student accommodation remained constrained, with development completions for PBSA at around half of their pre-pandemic levels and a shrinking supply of HMOs.
It added that it had made good progress in deploying the proceeds of its recent £450m equity raise and that its development pipeline would deliver an additional 4,600 beds between 2025 and 2028 at a total cost of £913m.
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